Rather than demanding a specific percentage of our income, the church leaves the dollar amount of our charitable giving up to our own good-faith discernment of what we can realistically afford.

Every morning when I check the cages, I am relieved to see Ron is still with us, ready for his breakfast, looking forward to the day. I hope he pulls through and that he’s not in pain.

Every year as the Feast of the Annunciation approaches, I think of how our Blessed Mother received the news that she would be the mother of Jesus.

In March, with Christmas now feeling well-behind us, we nevertheless touch it again, for on the 25th of this month we observe the Solemnity of the Annunciation as recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke.

God leaves the safety and glory of heaven, in a certain sense, and embraces the limitations of our human condition, coming to know in the flesh both the glory and tragedy of our nature without ever having sinned.

Even in the heavenly life of the world to come, we retain our human nature.

We’re all called to love unconditionally, to be the Prodigal’s father welcoming with open arms, to open our doors to a wider perimeter.

In the Land of Pleasant Living, we are blessed with many pleasant meatless options.

The time of Lent is not meant so much to provide us with a literal 40 forty days of penance, but rather to recall Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in the desert.

Before he was known for anything else, Pope Francis was known as “the first non-European pope in nearly 1,300 years.”